It is 1972. Naomi Nakane, a thirty-six-year-old
middle school teacher, recalls visiting a coulee, or ravine, in
Granton, Alberta, with her uncle Isamu, her father’s half-brother,
who she simply calls Uncle. They made the trip annually, beginning
in 1954. The school year begins. Cecil, Alberta,
where Naomi teaches, is a claustrophobically small town. Its inhabitants,
predominantly white Canadians, are fascinated and a little mystified
by Naomi. One day during class, she gets word that Uncle has died.
She goes to see his widow, whom she calls Obasan (aunt in
Japanese). A loaf of Uncle’s infamously inedible homemade bread
sits on the counter. The two women go to the attic, where Obasan
searches for something. Naomi thinks about her own mother’s unexplained
disappearance some thirty years earlier.
Naomi and Obasan go to bed. Naomi dreams of two couples. One
of the men is a British officer. She wakes to find that a package from
Aunt Emily, her mother’s sister, has arrived. She reflects on Aunt
Emily’s energetic crusades against racism, and for the remembrance
and documentation of what happened to Japanese Canadians during
World War II. Naomi begins thinking about her childhood, beginning
with her family’s beloved house in Vancouver, and her favorite tale
of Momotaro, a boy who emerged from a peach. She remembers releasing
chicks into a cage with a hen that pecked many of the chicks to
death. She remembers Old Man Gower, who repeatedly molested her
beginning when she was four years old.
Naomi continues to think back on her past. In 1941,
her mother went to Japan to see her own mother, who was ill. She
never returned. Stephen, Naomi’s older brother, began to have trouble
at school when other kids called him “Jap.” Grandma and Grandpa Nakane,
her father’s parents, were imprisoned in Hastings Park, a holding
area. Interrupting her memories, Naomi realizes that Stephen and
Aunt Emily are on their way to the house.
She looks at one of the items in Aunt Emily’s package:
a book of letters Emily wrote to her sister, Naomi’s mother. The
letters chronicle the rapid deterioration of conditions for Japanese
Canadians following the declaration of war. Their possessions were
confiscated, and they were rounded up and sent to labor camps. Some families
moved to ghost towns to escape persecution. During that time, Obasan
took Naomi and Stephen to Slocan, an abandoned mining town, where
they lived in a hut in the middle of the forest. For a time, they
shared their living quarters with Nomura-obasan, an elderly woman.
While in Slocan, Naomi’s paternal grandmother died. Grandma Nakane
had been living in a town called New Denver after leaving an internment
camp in Vancouver.
One winter day, Uncle joined them at the hut. Soon after
his arrival, Stephen, whose leg had been in a cast for months, recovered. Summer
came. One day, Naomi and her friend Kenji were playing by the lake
when they encountered Rough Lock Bill, a local resident, who talked
to them for a time. After he left, Naomi and Kenji took a raft onto
the lake and drifted farther than they intended to go. Kenji abandoned
Naomi in order to swim back to shore himself. She couldn’t swim
but, afraid of drifting out too far, jumped into the water anyway.
Rough Lock saved her from drowning. Naomi woke up in the hospital,
where she thought about her father, who she knew was also in the
hospital. She also thought about the racism her brother contended
with, and the murder of innocent animals.
Germany surrendered. One night at the public baths, Naomi learned
that Stephen and her father were sick with tuberculosis (TB). The
morning after the war ended, Father came to the cabin. Soon after,
the government ordered everyone out of Slocan. Father disappeared
again.
Naomi returns to the present day. She recalls asking Aunt
Emily what had happened to her mother and grandmother, and failing
to get a response.
She remembers going with Obasan, Uncle, and Stephen to Granton
in 1945. There they did backbreaking work
on a beet farm owned by the Barkers, an ungenerous white family.
Naomi’s family lived like animals in what had once been a chicken
coop. Japanese Canadians were not allowed to return home until 1949.
Naomi’s father died, a fact she didn’t allow herself to comprehend
for some time. Stephen attended the Royal Conservatory of Music
in Toronto, and went on to become a successful pianist. He rarely
returned home, and when he did, he was surly.
Mr. Barker comes to Obasan’s house with his second wife
to express his condolences for Uncle’s death. After the Barkers
leave, Naomi sleeps and dreams of her mother. When she wakes, Aunt Emily
and Stephen arrive along with Nakayama-sensei, an Anglican minister
and old friend. He reads aloud some letters from Aunt Emily’s package.
They are from Grandma Kato, Naomi’s mother’s mother, to her husband.
They explain that Naomi’s mother never wanted her children to know
what really happened to her in Japan. In 1945,
Mother and Grandma Kato were caught in a bombing in Nagasaki. In
that same bombing, Setsuko, Mother’s cousin and a new mother herself,
was blinded and maimed. Setsuko’s son survived, but disappeared
and was never found. Setsuko’s baby daughter got leukemia. In her
attempt to save the children, Grandma was separated from Mother.
A few days or weeks later, Grandma found Mother. She was alive,
but horribly disfigured and plagued by maggots.
Naomi addresses her mother, who is dead now, and says
she feels her presence. In the early morning, she drives to the
coulee.
